Treasures from a connoisseur
A fine collection of furniture and pictures, assembled by the late Dr Michael Wynne has been gradually dispersed over a number of sales during the past year. Several items turned up at two Adams' auctions in September, including a pair of fine mezzotints by Thomas Frye. This 18th-century Irish artist is little remembered today but enjoyed considerable fame during his own lifetime. A close friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds and a significant influence on Joseph Wright of Derby, Frye was born in Edenderry, Co Offaly in 1710. In his mid-twenties he moved to London where he became fashionable following a commission for a full-length portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales. As Crookshank and Glin note in their The Watercolours of Ireland c.1600-1914, he worked in a variety of media, including black and white chalk. One of these drawings, a brooding study of a man in profile (Fig 1), was sold by Adam's in late September for €32,000: a considerably higher sum than the €3,000-€5,000 anticipated.

Aside from his portrait work, Frye also deserves credit for being the man who introduced the production of fine porcelain to these islands. Experimenting with china clay, he discovered a method of making porcelain out of bone ash. The result produced not only brilliant whiteness and luminescence but also durability. With a business partner, Frye took out a patent for the manufacture of artificial soft-paste porcelain to be known as ‘New Canton' in reference to the Chinese pottery with which they hoped to compete. A factory was established near London's Bow Bridge in 1749 with Frye at the head of the operation and it proved highly successful. Despite the demands on his time, he still continued to work as a portraitist. In the years immediately preceding his death in 1762, he published a sequence of seventeen life-size mezzotint heads in two series. Although believed to have been drawn from life, other than a self-portrait, these engravings were issued without titles as a series of ‘fanciful heads' arranged in diverse poses. The second series (1761-1762), ‘Ladies, very elegantly attired in the fashion, and in the most agreeable attitudes' reflect the artist's interest in costume and jewellery. Two such ladies were sold by Adam's on 14 September; both went above their upper estimate of €1,500 to fetch €2,000.

Robert O'Byrne writes on fine art and design.